Eight Brooklyn startups pitched their products and services attempting to solve the problems of city life in front of a sold-out audience at incubator 1776 Wednesday night.

Each of the startups brought something to the table, from ideas on improving web experiences with deep hyperlinking, to improving the user experience of governments through Facebook Messenger and SMS texting.

But there were three startups in particular that grabbed our attention (and the attention of one of the evening’s judges, J.J. Kasper, as it turned out).

Venture Smarter

Though founded just in January, Venture Smarter already has a working relationship with the City of Cincinnati and said it has more than 25 customers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. It does make sense that as new technologies come online, there would be a space for organizing and making sense of what’s out there, both for consumers and producers.